The present invention relates generally to design automation, and relates more particularly to statistical timing analysis.
As complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology continues to scale down to forty-five nanometers and beyond, process variation effects become increasingly important, and must be taken into account, for design closure. Statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) is commonly used in the timing of chip designs to account for these process variation effects.
Two important diagnostic metrics obtained from SSTA are criticality and yield gradient. Criticality and yield gradient provide valuable information that can be used to guide timing optimization and timing-driven physical synthesis. The computational intensity of conventional methods for computing criticality and yield gradient, however, render such methods inefficient for use in optimizing large circuits.
Thus, there is a need in the art for an efficient method and apparatus for computing criticality and yield gradient.